


Every Day Like Yesterday

by slightlyjillian



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, M/M, complicated friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-14
Updated: 2010-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/slightlyjillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Nichol and Walker grew up as childhood friends. Reunited after years apart: one can see the future, but the other wants to fix the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Day Like Yesterday

When I decided to be _in love_ with my best friend rather than say, just _loving_ him... well, it got complicated. I might have been following the same track for some time, but the car I rode definitely jumped to an alternate path somewhere back when he stopped cutting his hair and his strange ideas about people started making sense to me.

I saw him less and less when the Marquise started sending our squad to the border patrol. I knew that the assignment was meant to demonstrate confidence in my abilities, but the weeks turned into months. Then two years went by without communicating with anyone besides HQ and my wingmen.

But that's just the life of Philip Walker, and I'm really not as interesting as the other guy.

So I should tell you that Ivan Nikolai came from the sort of family that couldn't get off the Outpost. His mother worked in the kitchens, not making the food but cleaning up after the staff ate. His father couldn't hold a job long before finding something wrong with his employer and letting them know exactly what he thought about them--none of it good. Sometimes with his fists. Then he came back and found things wrong with his wife or little Nikky. Eventually the security detail managed to catch on video the "accidental" fall Nikky took down a second floor staircase and relocated that cruel man.

Now that I'm older, I think something wasn't right in Nikolai senior's head. After that last fall, Nikky would say something wasn't right in his own head. He had his first vision that same day while seeing spiraling stars or swirling sparrows.

Yes, we still have sparrows in space. They got into the ducts on the transport ships. No one minds them really. In fact, they started making sparrow gardens where the creatures nest and such. Boasting live birds isn't bad for tourism either.

Nikky's vision wasn't anything as useful for the populace or noteworthy, except that it had come true.

I probably should have told him.

Differently.

So back on the Outpost, my Falcon in the trusty hands of the hanger crew, I hefted my only bag of belongings and found my way back to the old neighborhood. I walked past the sparrow garden and avoided the hall vendors, shaking my head against long scarves made in the Outpost colors and decorative shot glasses painted the same. Then I was at the unit door assigned to one Ivan Nikolai.

I wonder if he saw me coming.

"Who are you?" She answered the door in her underwear, which isn't exactly encouraging me to think that Nikky's stayed chaste in any fashion since we separated.

"Who are you?" I asked, not quite able to match her sarcasm in the same words. Actually, she made a lot of sense. Tall, blonde, not-particularly skinny with strangely dark eyebrows was Nikky's type. But then only one girl had his undivided attention and terror, which reminded me. This was _her_. "You're Dorothy Catalonia!"

The Catalonias own the independent trading line, the only ships other than the Falcons allowed along the borders. Not because they have any business with the aliens, but that the spacecrafts are just so well built and damn fast the aliens can't catch the trading fleet and they don't bother.

Her demeanor changed from a scowl to a pleasant smile. "Oh, you're one of mine? Finally."

"Er..." I didn't know what she meant by that comment. But then she must have heard a sound behind her as she moved just enough that I could see the same staircase from all those years ago.

"I thought that was just a hangover dream," said the man coming down the staircase. He pushed his dark curls away from his face and peered through narrowed eyes into the light from the doorway. "Son of a... Walker?"

I waved. "It's me."

Dorothy threw up one arm and huffed, "So he is one of yours. Of course."

Nichol didn't kiss her but the way he put his hand under her hair and along her neck made my face hot. Dorothy had an elegant beauty we'd fantasized about, but average guys didn't get her to come over in her underwear. And yet...

Nichol said, "People like a prophet, not an heiress."

"You just tell them what they want to hear," Dorothy pushed a finger into Nichol's t-shirt and turned away. "Uninterrupted weekend you say? Forget it. I'm heading out."

"Good riddins," Nichol said quietly watching me with a softer smile.

"I didn't really have time to wire," I explained my lack of prior announcement rather sheepishly. "I suppose I shouldn't assume that you'd just know all my comings and goings."

"Are _you_ a prophet? How would you know?" Nichol shrugged. "You're gone all the time with that Lightning Count of yours. The borders safe from alien invasion?"

"Read my mind," I joked, rather badly. We're out of practice both in our jokes and each other. He's not shaved for a few days which makes for a practical beard and I'm still in uniform. Both very different from the knees and elbows of the two teenagers who tried to catch the last butterfly in a net.

The enviro-unit caught us first, but we'd been closer than anyone who tried before or after. One day they found the butterfly on the ground, perfect and dead. Something of childhood adventure died with it.

I might have been staring but somewhat of that boy I remembered was gone. This person leaned his shoulder against the door and looked as if his arms had doubled in size. I wasn't weak, but pilots only grow lean.

"How's the family?" he asked, forgetting to invite me in. Or maybe he waited on Dorothy who did appear then in slacks and a wrinkled shirt likely from the day before.

My family had the means to leave Outpost and after finishing their contract took a new one on a luxury cruiser pointed back toward Earth. I would have told him that except Dorothy was repositioning us so that she was outside and I'd somehow fit to look out from Nichol's side.

"You'll have to tell Milliardo that I say 'hello' when you see him next," Dorothy blew us both kisses.

"Uh," I shifted my weight, confused by her familiarity with my commanding officer. "I don't see him that often..."

Nichol stood as still as a statue. And Dorothy was gone.

"Is this okay?" I asked. It'd be the first and last time I'd offer to leave, because I was exactly where I wanted to be.

"What are you talking about?" he shrugged closing the door and turning toward the room I remembered was their kitchen. "I don't have anything fancy. Straight caffeine for breakfast."

"Sounds good to me," I followed.

"Wait until you taste it." Nichol pulled forward an antique espresso machine. He cleared away a smudge with his thumb. "Nothing like this in the nearest six, Walker. I could charge a half-ton for one shot of this stuff." He stood up straight and smiled. "But for you it's on the house."

He ran the controls while I watched. Then we quietly drank the bitter, dark liquid savoring it like the memories we didn't share aloud. He had his version. I had mine.

After security allowed little Ivan Nikolai to have visitors, my parents and I went to the children's floor in the medical ward. They gave us visitor passes with barcode combination that only opened the places where we were allowed. Mine was a dummy, but made me feel like part of the community even as I had to hold my mother's hand.

Nichol became an Outpost foster when his parents were taken away. He'd receive average education, average allowance and temporary lodging in his family's unit. To supplement the allowance, Nichol worked the job his mother vacated. He didn't spend much and earned the half-tons to keep the unit where he'd grown up.

I had continued to visit him at the residential unit, but unlike the medical ward I didn't need a pass. Nichol had keyed the door to my command. I could go to his place to study or get away from my parents or to see him.

Then he had told me about the things he saw. Pieces of an image where I wore the Falcons jacket. And, Nichol had added with an edge, the man who would take me away. Away from Outpost, I'd thought.

"Away from me," Nichol had flushed darkly. "He does this..."

"What?" I had asked, confused by his flailing hands.

"You know," Nichol's growl cracked. "Like this."

He kissed me. Technically, my first. But not the one he was worried about from his prophecy. I don't remember much about kissing Nichol except that I nearly missed the sensation of his touch. The moment's briefness stretched into the following silence as I considered how to cement those seconds into forever.

Of course, while I was thinking about _him_, Nichol carried a picture of a different kiss in his memory. One I hadn't even had yet.

But I did, eventually. Milliardo Peacecraft has a way of becoming focused to where he cannot separate attachment and possession letting both mingle in a space of his heart called Want.

Explaining that confusion to my best friend had only made him go very pale.

"It happened, not that I was looking for it!" I had exclaimed--nervous about Milliardo, but more excited for Nichol. "You could register with a gift, Nikky. I'll witness it and they can't doubt me on the poly. Even if we are best friends, they'd know I wasn't lying."

"I haven't decided." Nichol had crossed his arms. "I can't make myself see things... so what's the use?"

"What if you saw an alien invasion? It'd be too late to register in time," I had reasoned. "Besides, when I get my orders off Outpost, I would miss my chance to be your witness."

He had given me a long examination. "You're right, of course."

Nichol had been the fastest confirmation the Outpost had ever given to a prophet. Besides earning a place in the Outpost Record book, Nichol found clients in queue for his services on the mere _potential_ of him dreaming something relevant in his future. And about theirs.

"I don't want to dream about them," he'd complained while I had packed my bag. The size had been smaller than I'd expected. Packing consisted of taking more and more things _out_. I barely made it so the zipper would close.

Back in his kitchen, in the now. We were face to face across the table. The memories lingered like a solar burn. Too many things had gone by unsaid or missed. We were children who didn't know what we were thinking let alone what the other had been trying to say.

I drank the last of my espresso. We were adults who didn't know what we were thinking.

Let alone what the other had been trying to say.

With a resolution so far in the future, not even a prophet could see.


End file.
